I Am Legend movie (boxed spoilers)

Cafe Society
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I’d hope that people would use boxed spoilers for at least the first page. I’m stealing some of what I wrote in the Open Spoilers thread. I don’t think there should be an Open Spoilers thread about a movie that hasn’t even opened yet. How will anyone know if they want to go see it if they can’t read any reactions for fear of spoiling themselves, but in that thread people were wondering about changes from the book, which is why I started this thread.

I saw this at the IMAX in Chicago last night, and it’s a DAMNED GOOD MOVIE! Highly recommended. It’s a hard movie to describe without giving away plot points. If you’ve only seen the trailer, don’t let anything spoil you. If it looks at all like something you’d see, just go. If it looks like something you are not interested in, you might be surprised by it.

It’s not an action movie though there are some action elements to it (you’re on the edge of your seat).

It’s not a horror movie though there are some horror elements to it. (you’re jumping out of your seat at times). DON’T take the kids!

It’s not a science fiction movie though there are some SF elements to it (it all looked very current, though just the teeniest bit futuristic such as with astronomical but believable gas prices. It’s set in 2012 btw.)

Will Smith is an excellent actor, and here, he’s at his best. His getting nominated would never happen, but this is an Oscar-worthy performance, no kidding. He is NOT an action/adventure star in this. His character is just a man, caught up in something unthinkable and he tries to cope with it. Most of what goes on in his head is shown by his expressions, and through the eyes. It’s a very psychological movie, and is often focused on Neville’s efforts to keep his sanity after most of the population is wiped out, and the movie is fascinating for it.

It’s an entertaining movie, but it’s also an interesting movie, not at all what I expected, which was something along the lines of a Die Hard in Zombieville. It’s exciting, it’s scary (again, it’s definitely not for the kids), but it’s psychological too.

It looks great. The front row of the IMAX is a great place to judge special effects and these were tremendous. I noticed no CGI although I know there was a lot in the film. I was just so caught up in Neville’s story I wasn’t looking for and didn’t see seams or fakey things.

I saw it for free, but I’m going to pay to go back and see it again when it opens.

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Thanks for starting the boxed spoilers thread; I wish more people would do that when the movie’s new. I’m seeing it tomorrow since my company is paying for it, woo!

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Just got back from seeing it at the local IMAX. I’m pretty much on board with Equipoise’s take. I wouldn’t have minded it not having much of any horror elements at all, the desolated world was so interesting in and of itself.

The one thing I’d like to point out, besides the great (seamless and well-used) VFX, was the sound design for this. Elevates it to a whole different level.

There was some nice acting from Smith, and the moments between him and his dog where genuine and heartwarming.

Go see it. It’s a blockbuster that actually works.

I thought the zombies/vampire/human things were obviously inspired from 28 Days Later. They were a little too heavy handed in light of the rest of the movie, and I don’t think blended well with the realism of the story. I like a lot of the ideas on the “monster”, but it was too exaggerated. And their “roars” sounded too supernatural. I would have gone with something more wailing and deformed human sounding. Thin and eerie, perhaps.

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It’s only a month old, I don’t think that’s TOO much of a Zombie thread. Besides, it’s a Zombie Movie, so it’s be appropriate.
Just saw I Am Legend last night. That’s actually pretty soon after the release for a movie we won’t trake our daughter to, anymore. Usually I have to wait until it’s out on video. I wanted to see what the Board had to say about it. Having read the threads, here are my comments:

1.) It doesn’t seem to be a remake of 28 Days After OR of the book OR of the 1964 Vincent Price version The Last Man on Earth. It shows clearly the marks of the 1971 movie The Omega Man, what with the biological plague and the urban setting (with heavy firepower), the hero watching movies (and shilling for the movie company), and the hero coming up with a cure.

2.) The film LOOKS gorgeous, with Manhattan falling into decay, the bombed-out bridges, the enshrouded buildings, and all. I suspect that this was one of the prime motivations for making this movie.

3.) Will Smith can certainly act, you gotta give him credit.

4.) The decline of New York , nonetheless, looks absurd. I can’t buy that it looks so awful in three years – grass growing in all the streets, Central Park turning intio a forest? Please.

5.) If they dynamited all the bridges and tunnels, where the hell did all the deer come from. Not to mention the lions. (I think the filmmmakers saw the beasts running free in Twelve Monkeys and liked the imagery). They came from the zoos? I described this scene to my ten-year-old daughter MilliCal and her comment (unprompted by me) was “But they don’t HAVE lions in Central Park Zoo.”

6.) Why the hell were they quarantining New York, anyway? It doesn’t seem to have done much good. But it made for gorgeous visuals of destroyed bridges, especially the Brooklyn Bridge.

7.) Will Smith’s suicide/act of bravery at the end seems wholly gratuitous and unnecessary. He could’ve chucked the grenade and survived himself, and that would’ve been a helluva lot more use to the presumed biochemists trying to reverse-engineer his cure than the vial of (unchilled!!) blood he gave the others

8.) Boy, they shilled DC comics movies a lot in this film, didn’t they? There seem to be ads for a Batman/Superman crossover movie, a Green Lantern movie, and a Teen Titans movie.

9.) Oh, yeah. As many have stated, it completely changes the plot, point, and tone of its putative source material. But that’s pretty much par for the course for adaptations of Science Fiction books in the cinema. I disagree with those who hold that it HAS to be the case, or that it’s more profitably the case. But the examples of good SF cinema are very few, and the cases of good and faithful adaptations fewer still.

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There is a much longer thread to zombify around her somewhere.